One of each

I’ve got say I’m surprised that Activision have gone for another future combat scenario with this year’s Call Of Duty. To be fair the look and feel does seem quite different but I would’ve bet money on them going back to World War II or some other historical war. Perhaps they still will though as I agree that some sort of extended flashback is quite likely in the story mode.

But I’m glad that all the exo suit stuff isn’t being completely abandoned from Advanced Warfare. It would be a backwards step in my view to go back to just running around on the ground. We’ve been doing that for the last dozen sequels, or whatever it is, and I’m glad to see continued evolution.

Half of me thinks that having one of the three games being historical is probably a good idea, maybe one in the past, one in the present, and one in the future but I’m happy to get away from the same old guns and enemies from the World War II and Vietnam. I do wonder if any of these games are going to go past trilogies though. Black Ops IV sounds like it would be pushing it and frankly I could do with out any more Ghosts at all.Gadfly

Familiar pair

I get the feeling I’m the only one that isn’t getting tired of all these HD remakes. Not that Gears Of War isn’t a good game but it looks fine as it is. It never had any frame rate issues when it first came out and it’s not like it looks offensively ugly as it is now. My problem is that it’s basically an admission that Microsoft haven’t got anything major for Christmas. That, and their line-up for the end of the year looks like being… Halo and Gears Of War. Oh.

To say that this generation is moving at a snail’s pace is an understatement but I’m seriously worried about the lack of new IP, from Microsoft and Sony (and Nintendo come to that). Phil Spencer seems like a good guy I agree, but I’m still not convinced we need a new Gears Of War let alone a remake of an old one. It just seems so…. 2000s.Grant

Doing it right

Everything I’ve seen of The Witcher 3 looks amazing, I imagine it’s going to be a very engrossing adventure, and the type of game I’ll really be able to lose myself in. The last game I played with similar fantasy elements was Skyrim. Although I did enjoy Skrim it wasn’t the best game mechanically and after many, many hours of enjoyment I came across a bug that would cause my console to freeze after playing for a few minutes. I recently purchased Dragon Age: Inquisition, I tried a few times to get past the opening hour or so, but I just can’t get into, and with The Witcher 3 now less than a month away I can’t see it getting attention anytime soon.

The way in which the developer/publisher are handling the DLC is great; everyone likes free DLC, and I have no problem paying for additional content when it’s fairly priced and adds a decent amount of new content. I also noticed the standard edition of The Witcher 3 comes with a soundtrack, Witcher Compendium, stickers and a world map – these may not seem like much but many other games would call this a limited edition, and would double the RRP. CD Projeckt RED’s approach to additional content is refreshing, and I’ve found myself… bewitched, by the whole thing.iLike Fat Ladys (gamertag)

Good as dead

Very sad news to see that Guillermo del Toro has confirmed the cancellation of Silent Hills. That game could have been amazing. The bust up between Kojima and Konami is causing some serious fallout, and it makes me wonder what possibly could have gone so awry?StalinsEpicTash
PS: To anyone who hasn’t downloaded it yet, the amazing P.T. will be removed from the PS store on the 29th.

GC: To be honest we were always surprised that Konami were willing to fund such an apparently big budget horror game, given the relatively niche audience it was likely to attract. As much as we would’ve loved to play the game it always seemed an odd decision for a company in their position.

Varied diet

A reader wrote in yesterday about when to introduce children to video games and this is a tricky subject as everyone will have a different opinion. Now my daughter is 2½ and has recently been learning to play Peggle, but the majority of the time she asks me to play and just watches. She has trouble aiming with stick and looking at the screen at same time.

However, we are talking of bursts of up to ½ hour on any day, and then not every day. As with all activities it’s important to get the structure for the child right and therefore I refuse to let her play for any great length of time, same with TV.

Gaming is just another activity she enjoys amongst other activities such as painting, drawings, reading (more reading to her at this stage while answering many questions, but she is just starting to learn to read), playing outside, gym club, imaginative play, toys, running, football, climbing and jumping on daddy, etc.

Obviously this is my opinion, and others will have a different view, but I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t playing video games and I turned out all right, for the most part.blackrogue13

PlayStation 5 preview

I read the weekend reader’s feature on PlayStation Now and wanted to add my own thoughts, having also taken part in the beta.

I have a pretty good broadband connection (download at 50mps, upload at 3mps) and found the technology side of it very impressive. The games worked with high resolution and, most surprisingly, no detectable input lag on the controller.

I tested F1 2013 as a game requiring fairly good twitch reactions and it performed perfectly. It was just as if I had a PlayStation 3 sitting under the TV.

However, I still don’t really get what this service is really for. It hardly seems worth Sony’s investment just to add a backwards compatibility capability to the PlayStation 4 or other devices. I have some interest in renting PlayStation 4 games and PS Now could work for this, but Sony have not discussed this as a possibility.

The real advantage of streaming games is that you don’t need much processing power at the point of use, so I can imagine the next generation of games running on some super unaffordable high spec machine somewhere else, allowing me to play over the network.

This would be very efficient as it would not require much outlay on hardware for the customers, yet would allow almost limitless computing power running the game itself, like every gamer having their own high end PC rig which constantly evolved in step with the latest hardware developments.

From my PS Now beta experience, I would say this seems a feasible vision of the future, and one that I would welcome.Monoxide_TSK (PSN ID)

GC: They have implied that PlayStation 4 games will be available sometime in the future, although probably not for some while yet. But you have it exactly right: this is basically a dry run for the PlayStation 5 (or perhaps 6), which won’t be a traditional console but instead a service very much like PS Now.

Night Raid

I have recently gone back to Destiny and have once again got quite hooked, however I have still never had the pleasure of doing a Raid on it.
Do any of you guys have any pre-arranged Raid nights/times that I could possible join as I feel I’m missing out on a huge part of the game (that I have actually heard is the best thing about it).

If so, please feel free to add me on PSN along with details of when you play so that I can hopefully fulfil my Destiny (!) and play a raid on Destiny.StevenskiChan (PSN ID)

Village postcards

It was with delight that I read a GCer was off to New York City, asking for gaming delights. Double delight when I saw it was his honeymoon, like mine was a few months ago in NYC.

Triple delight when it turned out to be Eyetunes, who contacted me recently because of his interest in my fanzine HyperPlay RPG, mentioned in my Reader’s Feature last weekend!

Anyway, yes, absolutely, Barcade is the place to go. There are two. One in Manhattan and another in Brooklyn. Both are beyond belief amazing: awesome ale and all-but-free classic arcade games. How we don’t have these here, I do not know. In another life, I’d set one up in Lower Marsh SE1. Do take ID whatever you do – regardless of age.

‘Video Games New York’ in the East Village is the best shop for retro games but the prices were a bit too high for me.

Anyway, all the best Eyetunes, hope you have as ace a time as we did, if not more.kincl4
PS: Will fwd some photos of NYC gaming venues to you, GC.
PPS: Finally Nintendo World was fun too. Quite small but considering we just happened across it, a marvellous surprise.

Inbox also-rans

I was wondering if you or anyone knows of any places where I can trade in import games?lordsinn4

Isn’t Robin suddenly being in Arkham Knight going to seem a bit weird? Where was he during all the other games then?Forme

This week’s Hot Topic

The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Onibee, who asks what’s the best game of the generation so far?

To clarify, that’s any game released on the Wii U, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, 3DS, or PS Vita. Or on PCs or smartphones between around 2011 and now. You can name remastered games such as The Last Of Us and GTA V if you really want to, but we’re most interested in games that were created primarily or solely for the new consoles.

How good do you think your choice is compared to other classic games and how much does it live up to your expectations of what a next gen game should be? How satisfied are you with the quality and quantity of games this gen, and how big a difference do you think there is between them and the last gen?